This diary is a series of reflections from the instructor of "Sustainable Business" taught online at the University of Oklahoma. It is written in a stream-on-consciousness style.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Creating a Culture of Sustainability

Try to create any culture and you'll meet with resistance, ridicule, and persecution. Or worse: being ignored. Sustainability is a counter culture of epic proportions but it is what is necessary. How does one support a Business Culture that honors sustainability? Or a community culture that honors sustainability? or a household culture that honors sustainability? I spent three days immersed in rich conversations and lamentations (mine, not theirs) with culture change agents from Austin and San Francisco who were snowed in at my house.

Household sustainability is perhaps the easiest but within the limitations of the social restraints, community limitations, and a conventional business economy. Our city planners have made bike transport almost impossible without risk of life; every artery is four-lane and 45 mph. Business provides limited organic food or local produce or local products. Still, no one promised an easy hike. Even the summit is a fog, but we know the general direction we are called to strive for.

I find solace in reading Horton Hears a Who about the tiny dust speck that insist it is real. And I wonder where that final YOP will come from that will wake the sleeping world.